Well I’ve been wanting to write this for a long time but never actually got the time, honestly it took me a lot of time to find all these applications which would make my XP look almost like Vista!

Screenshots check out the Aero effect:

Do you want to make your XP look like Vista and believe me it has stark resemblance, I am using this on my XP and honestly I sometimes forget which OS I’ve booted into, however here is how you can do it …

To achieve this we will make use of many 3rd party softwares:

Vista Bricopacks … I will tell what it is and how to get it

Windows Blinds 5.5 (If you want the aero effect, else a lower version of Windows Blinds will do but you wont be able to use the aero effect)

What will this do … this is a shell pack so basically it will change the icons, and default window images to resemble the ones by vista … note as this is a shell style it is not a resource hogger and you will get:

2. Windows Blinds:

I don’t think application needs any introduction it is the best theme manager for XP and is a beauty ….

Unfortunately this not being free you will have find your own way of obtaining it.

Now this theme has not been made by me but I have edited it so I am giving links to both … you can use which ever you feel is better major difference between both is that vista has a search bar in the start menu and in the windows … so the original creator of the theme included that but unfortunately you cannot search it is just an image which I did not like so I edited and removed it and some more minor tweaks to give it the exclusive Vista feel….Edited Theme – DownloadOriginal Theme

All credit to him for creating such a meticulous replica of vista!!!

4. Stardock Logon Studio:

As the name says it will change the default logon of windows XP to look like vista.
Price: Free
Size: 1.82 MB

Now 1 feature that I like about vista is that when you open my computer you get your hard drives with a status bar below the drive which tells you how much of the drive is filled … now this package does the almost the same … the results are pretty close…

Now in vista when you click on the start bar you get log off and shut down as text next to the buttons but vista doesn’t have this text and that is what this patch does … it removes the text it even allows you to restore it if you wish to.